Fairly quickly black weenie fell away as a thing as the white creatures got better and better. Black decks started to rely on synergies and disruption more than being an aggressive deck. Mono black decks of all flavours pretty much fell off all together not that long after the first visit to Zendikar.
White dorks are simply a massive amount better than the comparable black ones. Savannah Lions is now not close to the top 10 white aggro one drops while both Sarcomancy and Carnophage would still be in the top five black one drop aggro dorks. For every Soldier of the Pantheon white gets black gets a Tormented Hero. White already had more effective removal and so combined with the more efficient threats white weenie was able to remain in the meta and retain its tier one status consistently.
I have recently been thinking about new ways to approach mono black decks and one of the things I considered was a lack of focus in previous builds. Things like Hymn to Tourach and Sinkhole are a bit too powerful not to play in a mono black deck. It seems wrong to build a deck and leave out your best one drops like Inquisition on Thoughtsieze. Undoubtedly these are some of blacks best cards however the cube is not all about best, it is about most well suited. Historically I have tried to plug the gaps in blacks arsenal with these powerful cards however I feel a better approach is to focus on a maximum of one thing. If you are trying to build an aggressive deck you don't want to harm your consistency by reducing your threat count. Land destruction and discard effects are not winning you the game, if you Inquisition someone instead of making a 2/1 then you are not making the highest tempo play nor ending the game as quickly as possible. These kinds of effect are also rather situational and become dead cards quicker than most. While it might feel wrong to forgo some of these super powerful cards I think it is probably the way to go.
Black has just about kept up with white in terms of number of available aggressive one drops. It doesn't feel like it to me as I perpetually cut the limp black ones as they don't see any play and are clearly worse than the white ones that do see play and as such remain in the cube. Kytheon might be substantially better than any one drop black has to offer however this significant power difference isn't nearly as pronounced when you are just going for the cheapest most aggressive thing possible. The Gnarled Scarhide gets just as much work done as Kytheon in most of your wins in the deck that ends it curve at two!
The other thing this deck does is pack a lot of card advantage. This is not new to black aggro decks however it normally comes in the form of Necropotence which is powerful but inconsistent and slow. With so much redundancy in Dark Confidant effects it seems wise to use them rather than one off powerful cards you won't always see or be in a position to use. This is much like how white weenie decks pack a lot of their disruptive capabilities - on the back of Grizzly Bears! It then uses equipment or Crusade effects to turn its low power one drops and bears into more potent threats should the battle get to the midgame. Black can do these things too, it may not have quite the same quality in Crusade effects but it can make do sufficiently. In a deck going wide with one drops I prefer the Crusade cards to the clunky equipment. Jitte I would consider, having it makes you super safe against it in cube! Skullclamp is also a strong consideration but is more of a card advantage supplement than a creature buff. I would certainly play the Clamp over Necropotence in this list. That said Clamp works poorly with Crusade effects and is ultimately a bigger tempo drain than Necro, certainly something that would need careful testing to see if it could work. I think there is room for either Jitte or Smuggler's Copter but not both. The deck would be fine without either.
"Black Weenie"
Chrome Mox
Fatal Push
Dark Ritual
Gravecrawler
Bloodsoaked Champion
Diregraf Ghoul
Carnophage
Sarcomancy
Gnarled Scarhide
Tormented Hero
Vampire Lacerator
Rakdos Cackler
Cryptbreaker
Collective Brutality
Bad Moon
Bloodghast
Dark Confidant
Asylum Visitor
Blood Scrivener
Pain Seer
Glint Sleeve Siphoner
Heir of Falkenrath
Gifted Aetherborn
Hall of Triumph
Mogis Marauder
Contagion
13 Swamps
There are plenty of potential filler two drop dorks. Pack Rat gives you some late game and some discard utility but is even more expensive than getting a Jitte online. Vampire Hexmage gives you a nice proactive answer to planeswalkers and a selection of other annoying permanents but it offers little synergy and costs a small amount of tempo compared to what you could play in its stead. Nantuko Shade hits very hard but it is a little too mana intense, this deck isn't really looking to have more than three lands in play very often. There are also of course the various pump and prot knights, the "can be fliers" ones are likely the best options there. Some shadow dorks are passable if you really want the evasion but I think filling out with card draw dudes is a better way to use your two drop slots.
If I need more removal I will look to the free cards first. Sickening Shoal is likely not enough as all your cards are so cheap. Slaughter Pact and Snuff Out are likely better but Contagion is the premium for this list. Other option include Malicious Affliction for value or Tragic Slip or Murderous Cut for tempo. The latter seems a little too slow even with your discard. Unless you get a bunch of dorks killed it will be hard to fire off in time.
As for potential three drops there are loads and loads but I really don't want more than two and it seems like the Hall is a necessary evil for this direction of play. The three iterations of Liliana for 3 mana all seem quite nice but are all on the slow side. Drana, Liberator of Malakir, Yehenni, Undying Partisan, Flesh Carver and Geralf's Messengers are all contenders with a lot to offer an aggressive deck and a nice high power level. The issue is again that they are all a little slow and with such a low land count, unreliable too. Increasing this decks curve much at all would require the addition of more lands.
The Results!
Both Cryptbreaker and Blood Scrivener were outstanding in the deck, able to draw so many cards and do all sorts of cute trickery. Scrivener is arguably the best Dark Confidant in this list! The deck had some very nice starts, it was fairly consistent and it was pretty hard to contain. Things like Fire Ice and Arc Trail are pretty brutal for it alongside things like Kitchen Finks and Jitte, all the usual agro dork deck killers! This came as no surprise but the resilience of the deck when actually facing such cards was impressive. A simple Bad Moon sorts out the Arc Trail issues quite well at least! It did make for a rather scary Ophiomancer that I had to face down but that was a known risk! It was part of why the removal suite had no cards that can't take out black dudes.
While this is not yet tier one this is a potent deck. It does have things that other weenie decks don't have, most notably a tonne of card draw but also persistent dorks that make the usual counter of mass removal a lot less effective. With a few more actually good cheap black threats this deck could become a worthy cube archetype. While we are still leaning on Tormented Hero we shall have to be happy with being an impressive tier two sort of deck. With Amonkhet now being spoiled we are already one very solid card towards this kind of thing being tier one.
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